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I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

John Fowles

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John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
Despise
Mask
Green
Failure
Short
Masks
Greatest
Impotence
Effort
Cope
Cynicism

More quotes by John Fowles

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My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world.
John Fowles
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Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.
John Fowles
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I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.
John Fowles
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The newspapers are full of what we would like to happen to us and what we hope will never happen to us.
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If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.
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That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.
John Fowles
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Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
John Fowles
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I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.
John Fowles
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Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart.
John Fowles
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Always we try to put the wild in a cage.
John Fowles
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There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.
John Fowles
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The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.
John Fowles
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It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.
John Fowles
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You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts.
John Fowles
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We talked for hours. He talked and I listened. It was like wind and sunlight. It blew all the cobwebs away.
John Fowles
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I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.
John Fowles
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Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are.
John Fowles
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I read and I read and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality.
John Fowles
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Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
John Fowles
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The dead live. How do they live? By love.
John Fowles